“Loser Monologue,” by Sign Crushes Motorist, is 2:56 of uncut, unrequited longing. “If you knew how I felt, I wouldn't even write this s–t,” the singer-songwriter says at one point, veering toward self-loathing as a fog of sustained notes billows around him. “I wouldn't be so lonely.” There's no percussion and little change in melody, just Sign Crushes Motorist talking about romantic fantasies he knows will “never happen”.
A drumless mission from the perspective of a desperate loner – not usually what people think of as pop music. However, “Loser Monologue” has more than 57 million plays on Spotify alone. “People just gravitate towards things like this every now and then,” says Liam Mc Cay, the 19-year-old behind Sign Crushes Motorist. His theory is that while listening, “you can pretend you're not as mature as you are.”
In addition to Sign Crushes Motorist, Mc Cay records under more than a dozen other names, including Take Care, Birth Day, and more. Under these names, his most popular tracks often share certain characteristics: relaxed rhythms, short lengths, simple guitar melodies but often little else in the way of instrumentation, and vocals that are hushed to the point of being difficult to distinguish.
When distinct, however, the lyrics often bring to mind what Mc Cay describes as “a sense of longing for some kind of connection.” Take Care's “Everything Reminds Me of You” echoes a desperate wish from “Loser Monologue” – “All I want is to hold you” – while “Nothing Happened At All” is so self-serving it borders on deletion self: “I would do anything for you, I will be everything for you”.
“I was an angry teenager – I'm starting to grow up a bit,” Mc Cay says wistfully. “I never seemed to have much luck with women and all.” Plus, Ireland can be “a depressing place” at times, especially in winter.
All this angst resonates with a growing audience. Mc Cay recently attracted 16 million streams per week to his catalog, according to Luminate. “His ability to create full albums that soundtrack specific moments in your life, even at such a young age, is remarkable,” says Conor Ambrose, whose label LISTEN TO THE KIDS serves as Mc Cay's publisher.
Despite the melancholy and futility that permeates the singer's most popular tracks — Mc Cay called an album Take Care Anguish — is quick to make jokes, especially at his own expense. Ahead of his US tour earlier this year, he had to revisit some of the songs he had recorded and released in a frenzy of activity. “I had to listen to them again, like, 'This guy doesn't do anything,'” McKay jokes.
When performing his records, he continues, “sometimes it's a bit embarrassing to sing the lyrics.” And in a YouTube interview earlier this year, he gleefully announced a plan to “lock the doors” and “make something nobody's going to like.”
McKay grew up in Donegal, a pint-sized town in northwest Ireland, and his first foray into music was playing traditional tunes on the fiddle. When he turned to the guitar and started trying to write songs, he “obviously sounded like s–t” at first. But during the lockdown caused by COVID, it started to improve.
In 2021, he devised a “grand two-year plan”: He would release a pair of EPs followed by a sci-fi album. “Always sometimes it was my fault, big ideas,” he croons. But after working extensively on the first EP, Mc Cay was not satisfied with the result.
He took a break, temporarily writing other songs “to express something different”, and the resulting music sounded much better. “After that, everything became a side project,” McCay explains. In the summer of 2022, when it was released Childhood (as Day of Birth) and i will be ok (Sign Crushes Motorist's first album) within two months of each other, some of these side projects started to gain traction.
Major labels have lined up, but he's fended them off. Mc Cay is not entirely on an island. He has a manager, as well as Ambrose to help with the complicated world of publishing.
Ambrose believes that Mc Cay “embodies the essence of a modern independent artist” and the singer seems content to continue to operate in this way. “Every musician's goal is to be able to make a living from their music, and I can do that,” he says. “So I think I'll continue the way I'm going.” (An independent solo artist who consistently earns more than 16 million streams a week has a strong six-figure annual income.) Plus, it's possible that a major label could interfere with his way of doing business — churning out rapid-fire music across a dozen different artist projects — and they want him to focus on making a single nickname as big as possible.
Although McCay remains on course, there is one difference: He has moved to Los Angeles, a world away from the cold, dark winters of Ireland. “I feel so much better now that I'm out in the sun,” she says. And that means “I haven't really been interested in making sad music as of late.”
That doesn't mean he lacks inspiration. His recent tour — 17 dates in U.S. cities, mostly in 500-person clubs — introduced him to flesh-and-blood fans that once seemed like a distant mirage. “The numbers on the screen are all well and good,” says Mc Cay. “But to actually meet someone and hear them talk to you about music is really cool.”
He could start another side project, this one called Flesh World, from a magazine he spotted Twin Peaks. And he also wants to release a “midwest emo album” that he did a few years ago.
“I think I'll do two more albums and try to release four albums in January,” he says. “Why not;”
